Kuznetsov and his wife were dead and Ginsberg hadn’t jumped at shadows high enough. Arkady gingerly touched his neck. People didn’t have to go to Chechnya to be killed; they could do it right here in Moscow.
Arkady’s cell phone rang. He answered and Victor said, “Are you in a drunk tank with inebriates and addicts puking on your shoes?”
“No.”
“Well, I am. They picked me up outside the Gondolier. Police arresting police, what is the world coming to? I’m the one who suffers the hangovers, isn’t that enough? Children ask me, ‘Why do you drink?’”
“I can imagine.”
“You sound awful.”
“Yeah.”
“Anyway, I tell the children I drink because when I’m sober I see that life is not a primrose path, no, life is shit. Well, a road with bumps.”
“Potholes.” Arkady edged closer to the window. The women of the road crew had harnessed themselves to the roller handle and were slowly pulling the roller free of the pothole while the foreman urged them on. He looked like he wouldn’t refuse the loan of a whip.
“So I was at the Gondolier when who comes in but Detectives Isakov and Urman, along with some politicians handing out free T-shirts that say ‘I am a Russian Patriot.’ I got one.”
“Eva?” Despite the ice against his neck Arkady’s voice was a croak.
“She wasn’t there. But can you picture it, politicians in our bar? You know what this means? Isakov’s picture will be everywhere and our little plot with Zoya Filotova is over, after all we did.”
“We didn’t do much.”
“Some did more than others.”
Arkady let that enigmatic statement die; he was good for maybe four more words.
“You think Eva will come home?” Victor asked.
“Yes.”
“And Zhenya?”
“Yes.”
“Hope springs eternal?”
“It’s pathetic.”
As Arkady turned off the phone an ice cube squirted out of the dish towel and pinged the windowpane. The foreman on the street looked up. One of the women stumbled. Coins and keys spilled from her jacket and the roller began rolling back into the hole, dragging the women behind, but the foreman only stood and watched the window.
Arkady’s intention had been to stumble to the mattress and collapse, but it occurred to him that Eva had not left her key to the apartment. Eva tended to approach life in an all-or-nothing way. She may have taken the suitcase, but if she had been actually leaving for good she would have locked the door from the outside and slid the key under the door. He found himself on his knees searching the parquet with a penlight. What could have happened, he told himself, was that Isakov came for the suitcase and kept the key so he could get back in when he wanted, a possibility that Arkady was willing to call good news.
The little beam swept the floor like hope at the bottom of a well.
12
Amid the car lots and body shops that stretched along Leningrad Prospect the Casino of the Golden Khan was a fantasy of Oriental domes and minarets. Outside crouched the Russian winter. Inside spread a hush of luxury, of columns carved from malachite around a pool for golden koi and murals of a dreamlike Xanadu. A gilded statue of a Mongol archer presided over a gaming hall with tables for blackjack, poker and American roulette. Only members and their guests made it through the security check at the door and membership cost fifty thousand dollars. That way the club didn’t have to run a credit check.
Because the Golden Khan was more than a casino. It was a social club for millionaires. More business was done informally in the intimate lobbies and bars of the Golden Khan than in any office, and nothing impressed a client as much as dinner at the Khan; the casino’s restaurant featured steak tartare, naturally, and the most expensive wine list in Moscow, keeping in mind the mafia chief who sent back a bottle because it wasn’t expensive enough. A walk-in humidor stored cigars in mahogany drawers with the millionaire’s name etched in brass. A Russian banya and a Siamese spa refreshed the exhausted millionaire and sent him back to the tables. Escorts, Russian and Chinese, were available for a millionaire’s company or solace or good luck. Waitresses wafted by in harem pants carrying drinks. In the Xanadu tradition, the club had originally boasted an indoor menagerie of falcons, peacocks and a rare Tasmanian devil. The devil proved to look like a large rat that shrieked hideously and continually in competition with the peacocks until it dropped dead of exhaustion, while the peacocks were succeeded by parrots that said in a variety of voices, “Hit me!”
On occasion, as a civic gesture, the Golden Khan televised a beauty contest for the victims of a terrorist attack, a lingerie show for wounded soldiers or a chess tournament to benefit homeless kids. Admittedly, chess was a castaway. No one had time to play chess anymore, although every Russian knew how to play chess, agreed it was a measure of the intellect and assumed it was a special Russian talent. So, on what the management expected to be a slow winter morning-the millionaires tucked in their Swedish bed-sheets or SUVs-the general public was allowed into an area of the hall where mahogany blackjack tables with blue felt and padded armrests were temporarily replaced by folding tables, chessboards and game clocks. Parrots sidestepped on their perches. Security men in black suits set up a barrier of brass stands and golden ropes as players and supporters filtered in: veterans full of craftiness, a team of university students who were serenely confident, teenage girls with evasive eyes and a prodigy toting his booster seat. Each was a local legend, the winner of wars fought in dormitories and city parks. They had until ten to check in under a banner that declared “Blitz for Moscow Youth!” The event would have been a perfect challenge for Zhenya, but Platonov had checked the list of entrants and failed to find any sign that the boy had risen to the bait. Even so, it might lure him out as a spectator.
Arkady and Platonov stayed out of sight with the show’s producer in a van parked outside and watched on monitors as the presenter rehearsed her marks. She was petite as a gymnast and so excited she looked like a sparkler waiting to be lit.
The producer had the short ponytail of a part-time artist. He said, “A month ago she was runner-up for Miss Moscow; now she’s a presenter. We’re breaking her in by taping a somewhat inconsequential event. Chess? Give me a break.” Madonna sang from his pants and he pulled out a cell phone. “Excuse me.”
The van’s interior was cold and close, dimly lit by the glow of the screens and full of the sharp edges of audio, video and transmission gear. For the occasion Platonov had found a bow tie. Arkady wore, under his pea jacket and turtleneck, gauze swathed in salve; he was learning how many times a day a man had to turn his head. Walking to the car had been difficult. Driving was torture. Speaking was nearly impossible. Arkady had said hello when he boarded the van; otherwise he was mute.
After an animated conversation on the phone the producer began madly throwing switches at a console and said, “There’s been a change. The soccer game is canceled due to weather and we have to fill in. We’re going live in two minutes. You may have noticed there’s not enough room here to swing your dick. So you don’t touch anything-and maintain silence except to pass along any information about chess if I need it. If I need it I will hold up my right hand. Otherwise, act like your friend here, the one with nothing to say.” He pulled on a headset and tipped back for a better view of the presenter. “Lydia, Yura, Grisha, I have some news for you. We have to start early. We’re going live.”
On the screen Arkady saw the presenter’s personal candlepower rise as she got the word. The two cameramen with her finished mounting an overhead camera over the number one table before they picked up their handhelds. In the van the producer launched three conversations at the same time, choreographing the cameras and cueing her. At five, four, three, two, one, Lydia appeared next to a roulette table to welcome viewers to “a special benefit live at the exclusive Casino of the Golden Khan, the world-famous home of high-stakes gaming.”